


The First Time The Team Is Formed

by cherrylng



Category: Muse (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Friendship, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 22:38:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15034829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrylng/pseuds/cherrylng
Summary: When Matt had first joined the Hunter’s Guild, his wizard mentor had never mentioned just how much being at the starting rank of a rookie in this guild would suck when there are so many restrictions towards what sort of jobs you are allowed to take.AKA How the three met and came to form a team together.





	The First Time The Team Is Formed

**Author's Note:**

> Surprise! Turns out I liked my previous story idea more than enough to create a prequel of sorts here. So with a prequel, why not see how the three of them met in the first place? If you wonder what the setting is like, it’s sort of a fantasy world with elements of modernity dotted around here and there, and a lot of bureaucracy. The last one is to build up around what and how the guild the boys are in does in its functions. So, enjoy and comment!

A country needs a military for security and defense. Most states have an army and/or a navy. There are several that have elite army units to prove that these states are tougher and deadlier than others. But none of these military units from any nations can hold the same fame and prestige as the Hunter’s Guild.  
  
The Hunter’s Guild is one of the oldest guilds in the world that is still active. It is a name and institute well known in countries throughout the whole continent, even as far as the next continent over the other side of the planet. Kingdoms and nations have fallen and rise, but the Hunter’s Guild has outlived many by over a millenia to bear witness to many of it.  
  
To enter the Hunter’s Guild is a prestige in itself. The requirements to get in is hard. A good word may help, but the recruiting process only takes in a certain number each year. Many people of different classes from all over the continent still try to join anyways, with good reason.  
  
It is one of the only few guilds whose members are allowed to cross international borders to tackle problems that no army general would want to sacrifice a large number of soldiers to take down and a diplomatic nightmare for governments to deal with as monsters and dangerous humans have no care for the concept of borders. Most guilds, depending on the location of their headquarters, can only operate on city state or national level at their highest limit.  
  
That said, after entering the Hunter’s Guild, not all those who just joined the guild can make it through its requirements and as a result, it is not unusual to see people get washed out of the guild, with newcomers aka rookies having a higher than average dropout rate of 6 out of 10. The chances for those of increasing ranks that leave get rarer the higher one goes. When they do leave, it’s either due to retirement or death or simply to the public eye, no longer in active field duty.  
  
After three months since joining the guild, Matt can see why many would choose to leave. He had already seen at least ten rookies having left since that time.  
  
The job requests that the guild received are hard. That is an obvious. Even the ones rated to be suitable for lower ranking members to take on have chances of having casualties on their side, fatal or otherwise. The jobs that they do are often unpredictable in what they will face and why the guild is still necessary to this day. For those who go into doing these jobs, it will test whether or not you have the grit to get through it, to build your character up as you climb up the ranks.  
  
But that is not what Matt finds to be annoyed at. His source of annoyance is the large cork board pinned with papers right in front of him.  
  
Turns out, all the stories about the glamourous and awesome and downright dangerous missions that those in the Hunter’s Guild do? That is for high ranking members to do. If a guild member of a low ranking status went into such missions without the required skills and abilities to keep up to the demands of it, the results would have been fatal, both to the person and to the guild’s PR.  
  
How the guild manages to determine how hard such jobs will be is due to the fact that the guild gets a lot of job requests sent in on an almost daily delivery, those requests get processed through a department within the guild that thoroughly assesses and rates the level of difficulty of these contracts before having them sent out to the job requests boards.  
  
Rookies like Matt are not even close to be able to participate in the kind of missions that are highly risky for a low ranking guild member like him to take. Even if he wants to take up a job from the next board that is for those who are several levels higher than his current ranking, the boards are enchanted to prevent him from taking such a contract, much less touch the paper. They are not even allowed to cross through international borders freely until they attained a certain rank level that grants them that amongst other privileges provided.   
  
Instead, they get assigned with contracts that, in a nutshell, even an infantry soldier can deal with it without highly specialised skills or magic.  
  
These job requests sent to the guild are often nuisances that are easy for rookies to deal with, provided that they  _do_  know how to deal with it. They deal with problems like farm grown vegetables gaining sentience and turn dangerously savage due to unstable magical energy that contaminated the soil. Going through a city’s underground sewers to clear terrifying creatures -that may or may not be magical- that have been infesting and making the tunnels their home. Protecting and escorting merchants or well off travellers from predatory monsters and raiders that roam around roads used for travelling and transferring goods from place to place.  
  
Okay, so the last of the three examples is not a job that is commonly given to the lowest ranking members of the guild. When it does appear, it gets snapped up by the other rookies as soon as it is pinned up to the board. Compared to the first two, even as a mage, Matt would prefer to have to defend a trading caravan from monsters and raiders than to go to a farm or the sewers to deal with savage creatures with sharp teeth.  
  
It’s been three months since Matt had joined the Hunter’s Guild, having completed more than half a dozen jobs, and he wonders if it is all that it is cut out to be. His wizard mentor never mentioned how much being the rank of a rookie in this guild would suck when there are so many restrictions towards what sort of jobs you are allowed to take.  
  
To be fair, compared to others that have been in the guild for years and even decades, three months is still a relatively short time for someone like him to be called a rookie. But it annoys Matt that there are contracts on the board that can be taken as solo assignments, that he  _knows_  he is capable of doing but he is a rank or two below the requirements for the guild to allow him to take it.  
  
The ones that he is allowed to take are frustratingly easy to do for one person and he would have to complete at least thirty assignments of such low-ranking missions before Matt can get promoted up one rank. Completing that amount takes a long time to get there, which hence explains why it takes an average of one year or so for a rookie to get a promotion rank up, and Matt does not have the patience to use such a method to advance his ranking in the guild. It wouldn’t have put his skills to good use either.  
  
There is the other option. When a group of the guild’s members form a team together he can join them or get invited by them in order to take up much more difficult missions. Due to the mix of people coming from different ranks, the highest ranking member of the team would usually be the team leader and the one responsible to write the report of each member’s performance in the field to be submitted to the guildmaster for assessment. Taking this option would mean cutting down the number of missions that he is required to take. For every one hard job that he takes with a team, it was worth two rookie-level jobs.  
  
Yet, Matt hates joining those groups as well, for there have been times when such teams have invited him to a mission with them only to treat him differently due to them seeing him as a rookie, and thus, more suited to stay in the rear and support the other members by casting magical shields and charms that boost their abilities. That kind of treatment irritates Matt to the point that it makes his teeth grit. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine what those senior members have written about him in their reports. As for how bad the experience was to him, Matt can literally count on one hand the number of times he got invited to a team for such jobs.  
  
There is also the share of the reward from such team missions. Because the teams that he has joined consists of members in different ranking levels, the team leader does not distribute the money equally, but rather based on rank and role in the team. So what Matt gets in his payment is on par with what he earns from contracts rated for rookies is the icing on the terrible cake.  
  
The worst of the kind from those team missions were the senior, higher ranking members. The ones that talk about how they know his wizard mentor back in their younger years before he left the guild yet they act paternalistic towards him, as though Matt is too inexperienced on contract jobs of high difficulty and have to be taken care of by them so they give him the role to support the team instead.  
  
Matt  _hates_  those senior members with a passion and thinks of them as glory seekers that like to claim that they know other famous warriors and wizards to make it look as though such prestigious connections can give them the respect and fame that they want. If these individuals really knew who his mentor is and what he is like, they should have treated a mage like Matt with more respect.   
  
The wizard that came to be Matt’s mentor has earned Matt’s respect more than anyone else. The old man is the one who saw the innate talent and magical energy from within Matt when he was only just a child, giving him the reason to offer to take Matt in as his student.  
  
The wizard is a kind man and a competent teacher, but at the same time he was tough as nails when he trained his students. Matt had spent years as an apprentice mage under the tutelage of the wizard, being taught to channel the magical energy within him to turn it into spells, studying from books and tomes in the library, practicing and mastering several abilities and spells to apply it on the field.   
  
His mentor taught him all that Matt should know to be a mage by the time he came to the age to be regarded as a man and a well practised mage. Yet even after that, Matt had to spend over a year to study, meditate, practice, and finally create a magical spell that is uniquely his own before the wizard mentor can finally deem that he has graduated from being an apprentice to a full-fledged mage.  
  
“Why are you frowning at the job board as if it’s murdered your parents?” an amused voice coming from behind Matt asks.  
  
“I’m looking at it that way because I hate what’s on it,” Matt replies, giving a straight answer without caring how silly that question sounded to his ears. Turning his head just enough to see who was talking to him, Matt notices that it is a blond man in an attire that identifies him as a ranger.  
  
“Can’t blame you for that. My name’s Dom Howard,” the blond man introduces himself. “And you don’t need any introductions. I know that you’re Matt Bellamy. A rookie mage that just joined the guild.  
  
“And don’t get mad at me for calling you a rookie,” Dom says, quickly putting his hands up when Matt glares at him. “I’m a rookie like you too. Joined the same day with you.”  
  
“Know everything about me?” Matt huffed, unimpressed by the blond man’s attitude and claim.  
  
“I don’t know everything, but I might know enough,” Dom grins. “You’re classed as a Mage and mentored by the wizard Gerwin Bergfalk, one of the greatest wizards that has ever graced the halls of the Hunter’s Guild.”  
  
“What makes you think that Bergfalk mentored me?” Matt scoffs. He may have the clothes of a Mage but he doesn’t brag about who his mentor is. Even when the higher ranking members did, Matt kept his mouth shut and doesn’t confirm or deny the rumours. There are prideful mages and wizards who boast of having a famous wizard as their mentor, but Matt is not one of them. If he wants to become great and well respected, he will not use his mentor’s name to bolster his own.  
  
“Wizards and mages usually use wands, rods, or staffs to channel their magic. But it is rare and unusual to hear some use gauntlets to do that,” Dom says, eying at Matt’s own pair of gauntlets with a slight grin. “Rare enough that the few that have been known for it like Bergfalk would have taught his students how to use gauntlets to channel their magic that way.”  
  
For all the arrogance that Dom displays in being some know-it-all, Matt has to grudgingly admit that the blond man is spot on with his knowledge of mages and wizards. To a certain degree.  
  
And much like how the magical gauntlets that Matt is wearing makes him distinctly unique and stand out from other mages in the guild, lots of people in the guild know who Bergfalk is and what he looks like. Well, at least at the prime of his age while he was still a member of the guild and when his hair was not even turning grey yet. Bergfalk’s portrait painting hangs in the main hall, which prominently feature his personal gauntlets, embedded with runics that denote his magical class.  
  
“Still doesn’t mean that it could have been him that taught me,” Matt says, acting aloof. “Maybe it was another wizard who is also a gauntlet user who mentored me.”  
  
“You try to hide by denial, but you left out one glaring evidence,” Dom shakes his head, tutting at Matt. “Your own gauntlets. Even if the designs and the runic symbols aren’t completely the same as the ones in Bergfalk’s portrait, he left his coat of arms as a mark on yours.”  
  
Matt steels his face with a blank look, but inwardly he is amazed that Dom could see and identify his mentor’s mark on his gauntlets. Bergfalk stamped it on the metal plates placed near the wrists of Matt’s gauntlets, the wizard’s coat of arms being that of a shield with a falcon perched on top of a snow-capped mountain.   
  
Gauntlets made for wizards and mages are not mass produced. Rather, the gauntlets are smithed and handcrafted by the wizard mentor -either by themselves or a commissioned blacksmith that can use magic- to gift it to their students. And each pair of gauntlets is specifically designed and tailored for each student from what the mentor has observed what each of them would specialise in their magical abilities, so no two pairs are the same from the other.  
  
And of course, some wizards want others to know their handiwork or make it easier for their students to prove who was their mentor by stamping on a mark.  
  
“Not many people aside from the higher ranking guild members could recognise my mentor’s coat of arms. Consider me impressed then, Dom Howard,” Matt says.  
  
“See? Told you I know just enough about you to know your background,” Dom smirks. “But you know that I don’t need any introductions.”  
  
Matt rolls his eyes. “Because unlike you, I didn’t tell everyone about myself repeatedly in the bar over the past few months.”  
  
He had heard of the stories and rumours from the bar about Dom’s origins. Some of those facts came from the blond man himself to keep the story recirculated over and over. While some might have been lost since or over-exaggerated, nonetheless Matt remembers a lot of it.  
  
Dominic Howard was born as a bastard and abandoned as a baby that was later picked up and raised by a family that consists of travellers, musicians, dancers, thieves, charlatans, and conmen. His home was a horse-drawn caravan that is part of a caravan convoy that is constantly on the move, the ‘mobile village’ never staying at one place for more than a season before packing up and moving elsewhere.  
  
With a background origin like that, it is unsurprising to find Dom growing up to be a natural charmer and smooth talker, more than capable to get what he wants by saying the right words at the right time. If he can’t get it by his charisma and sweet words, however, he is also more than capable of robbing someone blind. In other words, Dom had all the makings that would suit him to be a Rogue class.  
  
What is surprising about Dom, however, is that rather than being a Rogue, he is actually classed as a Ranger. Apparently in his youth, his family recognised his talent and skill on a bow and arrow, and found a retired Ranger to train him and hone his talents before he left his nomadic family to join the Hunter’s Guild.  
  
Despite the both of them having joined the Hunter’s Guild on the same day, Matt did not have much interaction with Dom. Considering that he has indeed heard the rumours and stories of the ranger who grew up in a family of the aforementioned travellers, musicians, dancers, thieves, charlatans, and conmen, Matt kept his distance for his own reasons.  
  
“What’s so bad about it? I find it easier and better to let the others tell my story while I find out what are the stories of the people in this guild,” Dom explains, sounding firm in his belief that his logic is sound.  
  
“What are you doing here aside from wanting either see me burn this board down or for you to show off how much you know about me?” Matt asks.  
  
“I came to you because I know the look on your face when you were looking at the board,” Dom states. He looks at the board contemplatively. “I understand your dilemma because I’m on the same situation as you are.”  
  
“You are? Really?” Matt asks with a raised eyebrow and his voice laden with scepticism.  
  
The ranger nods. “Not even kidding about it. I want to get up the ranks to get better job contracts with better rewards. But it takes a lot of time and a number of missions before I can even get the next rank up. Accomplish thirty missions? Even you can see that the system is set up to make it a humongous hurdle for rookies to achieve the next rank up.”  
  
“On that, I can agree with you.” At least now, there is a fellow rookie that Matt might sit down and complain together about the system the guild put in place.  
  
“And then there’s always the other option by joining or get invited to a party for those missions with higher difficulties. It looks like you have a particular loathing for it,” Dom says, seeing Matt make a face.  
  
“You’ll be incredibly lucky if some of those higher ranking jerks can even treat you like part of the team and not see you as a glorified servant,” Matt snorted, rolling his eyes.  
  
“See? We see exactly eye to eye towards this dilemma of ours,” Dom says.  
  
Still, Matt is wary. Just because they have the same problems doesn’t mean that their motives can be the same.  
  
“You want something from me.”  
  
“No, I don’t,” Dom snickers, shaking his head before looking intently at the board. “I want something on that board and I think that we can both benefit out of it if you are willing to hear my proposal.”  
  
While it is tempting to brush off from listening to Dom, Matt decides not to. After all, what has he got to lose in this encounter? He might as well humour the ranger to get whatever it is inside of him to come out and he will be on his way.  
  
“What’s your plan?”  
  
“Why don’t we as rookies team up together?”  
  
“Team up?” Matt turns to Dom with a doubtful face. Considering the number of times he joined a temporary team, the mage has his reasons to be wary. However, no one like Dom had come up to him with such a proposal.  
  
“If we team up together, we can take on the contracts that are for those a rank above us. With a team of two or three, the requirements are just low enough for us to take on it. We take those missions together, share the rewards equally, and it can shorten the time it takes for us to get a rank up.”  
  
“What about submitting reports on about the team’s performance on the field?” Matt asks. For how Dom is proposing with such an ideal and appealing idea, Matt can see that there is a problem that the ranger has yet to deal with.  
  
“That’s the part that I’m coming to. We’re forming a team just consisting of rookies, that means that until we got someone ranked higher than we are in the group, we’re all equals to each other,” Dom explains. “And I read the rules, Matt, so I know what they will do. We just all write our reports, submit it, and let the mission’s results speak for us. If they asked for us, we all go in and tell them as it is.”  
  
With that answer, Matt starts to really think about the blond ranger’s proposal of forming a team. Truthfully, before he asked that question, Dom’s proposal already appeals to Matt by several factors. He would be teaming up and cooperating with someone of equal ranking to him. His share will be the same with the ranger, even if it means earning less than a rookie level job. And most of all, it benefits them as it might put them on a potential faster track towards a promotion rank up.  
  
“What do you say? Partners?” Dom offers his hand out. Matt looks at it for a few seconds and chooses not to shake it.  
  
“Only if you know which contracts we can start out with,” he says instead. Dom may be the one who wants to make a team that has a far better and more equal status, but until he can prove that he can keep to his promises, Matt wants to remain cautious.  
  
Instead of being offended by Matt’s response, Dom merely smiled and nodded. He really is using his charms on him, Matt mentally noted.  
  
“Why don’t we take on this contract as the first job to experiment our cooperation together?” Dom takes down one of the papers and hands it over for Matt to read it. After reading through it, and noting the handsome reward, Matt rolls his eyes.  
  
“Didn’t you read the fine print on this paper?” he asks, shoving the paper back to the ranger. “It may have a good pay, but it states that this job requires a swordsman.  _Neither_  of us are of that class.”  
  
“I did see that part. But what the contract  _doesn’t_  say is that you can’t invite a swordsman to join our team,” Dom smirks.  
  
“Do you know any rookie swordsman that wants to join us for this job?” Matt asks.  
  
“I did see him at the guild’s bar before coming here. You should know him too. He joined the guild around the same week with us.”  
  
“Which one?” Matt gives Dom a blank look. “There were at least half a dozen swordsmen that joined the guild around that time.”  
  
“His name is Chris Wolstenholme. He’s the one that carries a huge sword on his back.”  
  
Now that he has some information, Matt finds that he does know who that swordsman is. It is hard to miss him lounging around in one the guild’s bars that is frequently used by the other rookies, with that large, wide two-handed sword kept in a leather scabbard hanging from his back. The way he carries it around is as though he treats the heavy weight of the huge sword like a light backpack. The sight of it makes Matt think that either the scabbard holding the sword is magically enchanted to remain light despite holding such a heavy weight or Chris is really used to carrying the sword around like that.  
  
Although the huge sword is mighty impressive and there is no doubt that the swordsman is more than capable of wielding it, Matt had noticed several times that Chris also carries a more regular-sized sword and a dagger, both weapons sheathed by his belt, which meant that the swordsman is adaptive and well-versed with using various melee weapons.  
  
“What do you know of him?” Matt inquires to the ranger.  
  
“He’s born from the Southern Isles that is part of the Kingdom of Callahan. Based on what I heard from his talks in the bar, he won a local sword fighting competition at the age of thirteen, beating all the older contestants and that caught the attention of the Duke of Portree. The guy was impressed enough that he took him into his estate and had the best swordsmen hired to teach him.  
  
“From what’s been heard about Chris himself, his prowess as a swordfighter is so good that he can win a match against multiple opponents,” Dom whistles. “He once beat eight of the Duke’s best guards simultaneously during a practice match. And I’m not making that up. He did say that.”  
  
Sometimes it can be easy for Matt to forget that the Hunter’s Guild attracts the best and brightest from all over the continent. But hearing what he is hearing from Dom, even he can’t help but be impressed by what Chris Wolstenholme is capable of.  
  
“And that sword that he has hung over his back? It’s a gift from the Duke himself before he left his services to join the guild.”  
  
“So are we going to stand here and keep on gushing about how cool he is or can we finally go and ask him if he wants to join us for a contract?” Matt asks. At this point, while he would love to hear more about it, he doesn’t want to stand here and yet to have made a move towards asking the swordsman if he wants to join them for a job or not.  
  
Prompted like that, Dom approaches the swordsman while Matt trails behind the ranger. When they got close enough, Matt can see that Chris is having his supper currently, consisting of roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas.  
  
“Hello there, I’m Dom. I’m a ranger and right next to me is my friend and mage, Matt,” Dom introduces himself to the swordsman. Matt resists from correcting the ranger that they are not friends. He has yet to even consider seeing Dom as a friend to him.  
  
Chris greeted them each with a nod while his mouth is full with food.  
  
“Chris Wolstenholme. Swordsman,” the swordsman greets himself after swallowing. “You two need me to help you or something?”  
  
“Are you busy or have an upcoming job to do?” Dom asks.  
  
“Not at the moment,” Chris replies before taking another bite of roast beef.  
  
“You’re in luck then! We want to do a contract that requires a swordsman for the job. Would you like to join us?” Dom shows the contract to the swordsman.  
  
“This job contract is for those above the rank of a rookie,” Chris says after peering at the paper.  
  
“Yes, but you are allowed to take such a contract so long as you can team up with a few other people,” Dom points out, using the same reasoning as he had been using to Matt. “It’s not as if having three rookies taking this contract would be disapproved of by the guildmaster.”  
  
Chris looks at the ranger and the mage, his face giving a contemplative look as he picks up a mug of ale to drink.  
  
“Is the reward going to be split equally?” Chris asks, putting the mug down.  
  
“The money will be split equally between the three of us. No one gets more or less than the others,” Dom says solemnly.  
  
Chris puts the knife and fork down on the plate, turning his whole body to face the mage and ranger fully. Hands put down on his knees, he looks at them before he finally nods his head to Matt and Dom.  
  
“Okay then,” Chris finally says. It seems that after listening to Dom’s spiel, that last line was all that Chris needed to hear from them. “I’m game to join you two for this job then.”  
  
“Great! We have a team now, Matt!” Dom exclaims, turning to Matt with a grin that is a mix of joy that he has accomplished what he wanted and in smugness due to being able to persuade to Matt and Chris to form a team with him. “So, I’ll submit this request on it with our names included. If all goes to plan and it’s approved, we’ll be meeting at the train station at ten in the morning, on the day after tomorrow. Is that enough time for you two to prepare your backpack and equipment?”  
  
“More than enough,” Chris answers.  
  
“I’ll have sufficient time,” Matt says.  
  
Gleeful at their response, Dom claps his hands together and gives them a big smile.  
  
“Gentlemen,” he starts. “I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship and a great team.”  
  
For all that Matt thinks that that is just Dom being the optimistic smooth-talker that he is, he has no idea how right Dom’s words came to be over the following years.


End file.
